CleverDonkey.com …Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel

We call this "The Loser Bench"

It would not be possible for me to recommend “The Hangover” highly enough.  This movie is laugh-out-loud funny from beginning to end, and is driven by the script, the story, and the situations, not by “stars”.  Hollywood has gotten lazy about making deals instead of making movies, and have developed a pattern of putting A-list stars into films with mediocre scripts and huge advertising budgets, and just expecting us to show up because we don’t know any better.

Well, now you know better, at least about this film.  Parts of it are raunchy, but that’s not its purpose – the raunch is essential to the plot.  And the plot sounds hackneyed, but it is *not*.  This is the story of four friends who go to Las Vegas for a

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Gimme my $3.50 matinee ticket price back!!

What a terrible waste of an afternoon out of the house!  At least we ate sushi.

When the ad campaign for Drag Me to Hell came out a few weeks ago, I was cautiously optimistic.  Over the years, Engineerboy has educated me in the way of Sam and Ivan Raimi: Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, and even Army of Darkness.  Hilarious, silly, fun, campy, sly horror.  Classics.  I’ll watch them any time they come on cable.  Who can resist … uh… deciduous molestation, anyway?  And Raimi’s a big-time director now, and the three Spidey films to his credit have given him the stick in Hollywood to go back to his old schtick.   

If only he had. 

Drag Me To Hell isn’t a fun,

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Honest(ly huge) Abe

We had never seen the first movie in this series, Night at the Museum, but ended up watching it a couple of days before going to see the new installment, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.  We found the first movie to be enjoyable and forgettable, but funny enough that we decided to go out and see the sequel this weekend.

Battle of the Smithsonian is, quite enjoyably, more of the same, but on a larger scale.  Many of the familiar characters from the first film are back again, and a host of new characters are added.  Also, this film takes place across the campus of the Smithsonian museum buildings, and makes sure to pull some of the personality of the museum itself into the mix.  Smithsonian isn’t trying to hide a history

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Boldly Going Again

We saw the new Star Trek movie today (opening night), and it was fantastic.  To give some context, I’m an old geezer and religiously watched the original Star Trek series during its initial run, and many more times in syndication.  I’ve seen the Star Trek movies that included the original cast.  I never really got into any of the subsequent Trek series, films, fanfic, spin-offs, books, conventions, etc, so I’m not a slavish Trek nerd, but I’m an old guard, indigenous Trek fan.

And coming from that perspective, my take is that J.J. Abrams did a great job of refreshing and updating the original Star Trek series with this prequel, and he was both faithful to the original and also daring enough to make changes in what felt to be a near-perfect proportion.  The new cast, playing

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Not-Lean, Not-Mean, Protecting Machine

I was in the mood to watch a movie this weekend, but nothing at any of the nearby theaters was really grabbing at me.  I’d seen the ads for Paul Blart: Mall Cop and chuckled a bit, and I think Kevin James is a naturally funny guy, so I figured I’d give it a shot even though it looked like it might be a throwaway.  I’m glad I did.

This film is almost exactly what you’d expect – Paul Blart is a mall cop, he’s a loveable loser, he takes his job much more seriously than is called for, and when trouble invades the mall he has a chance to redeem himself and become the hero.  Think of it as a comedic homage to Die Hard, set in a New Jersey mall, only

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We Are Not Men

Idiocracy is the latest film by Mike Judge, who also created Office Space.  It was released in 2006, playing in only a handful of theaters with no advance publicity of any kind, and it quickly made the jump to DVD.  However, if there is any movie in recent memory that SHOULD have played endlessly at the multiplexes of America, it was Idiocracy.

As we here in the United States drown in a downward spiral of reality TV, processed foods, bombastic advertising, mindlessly large corporations, zombified workforces, and borderline retarded elected leaders, Idiocracy perfectly describes the water with devastatingly funny, sadly accurate satire and wit.

The story revolves around Joe (Luke Wilson), a current-day soldier who is selected, along with Rita (Maya Rudolph), to participate in a year-long human hibernation study.  However, while they are

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Rock Me, Rock Me, Rock Me Sexy Jesus!

Hamlet 2 is one of those movies that you simply don’t (and can’t) expect, and I mean that in a good way.  Is it a satire on inspirational teacher movies?  Yes.  Is it a parody of great-but-misunderstood-artist movies?  Yes.  Does it mock innocent-white-girl-falls-for-tough-chicano-gang-banger?  Yes.

Does it insult Tucson?  Yes.  Does David Arquette’s character say less than 10 words in his running cameo?  Yes (approximately).  Does Elisabeth Shue have a small part?  Yes.  Who does she play?  Herself, working as a nurse at a Tucson hospital after burning out and leaving Hollywood behind. 

Does the inspirational teacher go on an acid trip?  Yes.  Is Catherine Keener both a) looking her age and b) still damn sexy?  Yes (pay attention, Hollywood and actresses).

Is there a song in the play-within-the-film called Rock Me, Sexy Jesus? 

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Tropic Thunder is flat out hilarious.  I’m not a huge fan of Ben Stiller’s ouevre (or his movies), and I can’t recall one of his films I really liked or wanted to see more than once.  Zoolander and There’s Something About Mary were okay, but nothing to write home about.  I barely chuckled at either Parents movie.  I couldn’t watch all of the Museum movie.  Can’t really remember any others.

Suffice it to say I’m not a Stiller fanboy.  I’m still not, but I’m a big fan of Tropic Thunder.  The film is the story of the making of the film-within-a-film Tropic Thunder, based on the book by a Vietnam war vet (played pitch-perfectly by Nick Nolte).  The production is struggling, so the director (Steve Coogan) opts to go for a more cinema verite approach, by taking his actors into the

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There have been a handful of movies that have changed me, meaning that they were so impactful that after I watched them I was a different person.  Apocalypse Now, A Clockwork Orange, Eraserhead, Full Metal Jacket – films like that.  Now add to the list an unexpected entry – Skidoo.

Skidoo is not like the other films on the list – they are dark, brooding, and profound.  Skidoo is…well, it’s….kind of…hm…like…well…indescribable.  It’s not really dark or brooding.  Any profundity is tongue-in-cheek.  It’s funny, both intentionally and unintentionally.  It has a bizarre story line.

That’s the word for it – bizarre.  If you’re like me, you’ve never heard of this movie.  I hadn’t either until it popped up recently on Turner Classic Movies one late-night/early-morning.  I consider myself a sort of film dilletante – not really a student of film,

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I am not a Batman fanboy.  I am usually bored and confused by films based on comic books (calling them “graphic novels” is the ultimate in geek denial).  If I recall correctly, I have enjoyed one, or maybe two, of the films in this franchise, but not to any great extent.  I couldn’t really pick Heath Ledger out of a lineup and don’t really recall anything he was in before his untimely passing.

I had also gotten tired of hearing all the hype about this installment, and about the amazing, Oscar-worthy performance by Heath Ledger.  I went in skeptical, to say the least. 

I walked out a believer.

Heath Ledger gives a miraculous performance as The Joker.  The character is completely original, although I kept expecting him to come across as Nicholson (either in The Shining or as The Joker) or as

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